Prize

I was awarded the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society Prize in Avila in February of 2011, in a ceremony presided by Spanish academic and political authorities, including the President of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society and Spain Secretary of State for Research, depicted in the photo. The Prize Jury was presided by María J. Carro and consisted of members María J. Esteban, Marisa Fernández, David Nualart, Jesús M. Sanz, Terry Tao and Efim Zelmanov.

Prize Ceremony on February 2, 2011. From left to right, Fields Medallists Efim Zelmanov and Cedric Villani, Álvaro Pelayo, and Francisco Gancedo.

Among the ceremony attendees were Efim Zelmanov (Fields Medal 1994 and who would later be, from 2014 to 2020, my department colleague at the University of California San Diego), and Cedric Villani (Fields Medal 2010), depicted to my right in the photo above, during the ceremony.

A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.
A. Einstein